


Shared Space

by soupypictures



Series: FEMA trailer stories [1]
Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms
Genre: (i mean for the most part i kinda skimped on the details), Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Domesticity, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 21:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16584383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupypictures/pseuds/soupypictures
Summary: Maggie moves Daryl out from a tent into Paul's trailer, and Daryl goes because she said so, despite his worry about being in close quarters with that loud-mouthed ninja. That's his gruff exterior, though, and Paul sees right through it.





	Shared Space

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my google docs for too long. I decided I'd shape it up some and go ahead and send it out into the universe. Please enjoy!

Hilltop was expanding again.

They’d started building a secondary wall and small cabins inside the primary walls to replace the tent city in front of Barrington. They’d got workers over from the Kingdom on exchange for the blacksmith. More bodies meant cramped quarters, and Daryl was pushed from his tent into Paul’s trailer. 

“I’m _fine_ in the tent,” Daryl muttered to Maggie, packing up his bag nonetheless. He learned a long time ago that you do what Maggie says. He just ain’t going without saying anything.

“Yeah, well Jesus ain’t _fine_ to share space with just anyone, you know that. Think of it as a favor.”

“Ain’t doin’ him any favors.”

“It’s a favor to _me_.” Maggie leveled a look at him and hitched Herschel up on her hip. “I don’t know why you pretend disdain. He’s my friend, and I wish you two would get along.”

“Get along fine.” And they do. Paul is a good partner out on the road, quiet enough with those ninja skills to take hunting. Reliable. _That don’t mean I wanna live with him._

“So what’s the harm in sharing a little living space then? Why the insistence to stay here?”

“I’m packin’ up, aren’t I?” 

“Is it all the books?”

“Maggie, I’m _goin_ ’.” 

\---

The truth was that it _was_ about the books. Hadn’t ever had time for books, reading for pleasure. Hurt his eyes, gave him a headache. Nothing pleasurable about that, even if he did have the time. It was also about how everything in Paul’s trailer was neat and had its place. And how Paul kept himself that way too, and Daryl hadn’t ever had the luxury of keeping neat and orderly, not Before and certainly not Since. 

How’s he supposed to just _be_ when he’s always worried about dirtying up Paul’s space?

\---

 _Jesus_ was out Kingdom way when Daryl moved in, so he dropped his bag by the couch and slept on that for one night. His back protested so he moved to the floor. That was where he was when Paul found him late on the morning he returned, sleeping in after the late shift on watch. Or trying to, anyway. Paul’s boots clomping around pulled him out of his light sleep.

“Daryl? Why are you sleeping on the floor?”

Daryl rested his arm over his eyes and sighed. “Maggie not tell you?”

“Maggie said you she was moving you in here, but that doesn’t explain why you’re sleeping on the floor.”  
“Couch hurt my back.”

Paul scoffed and clomped past Daryl. “There’s a _bed_.”

“S’yours,” Daryl muttered, sitting up and scrubbing his hands over his face.

“No reason it should go unused while I’m gone.”

“I ain’t sleepin’ in your bed. I’m fine here, slept worse places in my life.”

There was a rustling from behind him, a thump, and a moment later Paul came back around to stand in front of Daryl sans jacket and gloves. “I’m not going to argue with you about where you choose to sleep. But any time I’m gone, feel free to use the bed. I’ll look for a camping pad for the floor.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know. But I’m going to. Because I want to, and it makes me feel good to help the people who keep this place safe. Which includes you.” Paul sighed. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll get out of your hair.”

Paul was gone before Daryl has a chance to respond, and somehow he drifted back to sleep.

\----

After a few days their schedules synced up as they picked up watch shifts together. Paul even helped set snares one morning, a quick study. Out together and in together, they were sharing not only space but time as well. Up at dawn one morning, wordlessly moving around Paul as they prepared to go hunting, Daryl realized that he felt ... settled.

It rattled his nerves.

Daryl thought on it as they cleared the snares of rabbits (three) and tracked a young buck to the river. He thought on it some more as he field-dressed the deer, talking Paul through the rabbits. Paul’s final rabbit was much cleaner than his first, but still a ways away from good.

“Getting better,” Daryl said, hefting the buck over his shoulders.

“A credit to my teacher.”

Daryl felt his face heat. “Ain’t nobody else picked it up so quick,” and it wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it wasn’t like he was always teaching people.

“Thank you for being patient with me.” Paul looked over and raised his eyebrow over the rabbits slung over his shoulder.

Daryl knew what that meant. That look was “accept my thanks or I’ll make you.” Paul had a habit of forcing Daryl to accept all matter of thanks and praise, like Daryl was his personal project or something. He learned early that resistance was futile with Paul, didn’t matter what he was going on about. “You’re welcome,” he forced out.

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Of all the ideas he had about what it would be like living with Paul, “quiet” hadn’t been one of them. Out there with everyone else, he was always chattering on and having trivial conversations. Daryl figured that was just Paul. He figured he’d have to grit his teeth and suffer through inane conversations but there hadn’t been a single one.

“You’re quieter than I thought you’d be,” Daryl found himself saying.

“It’s a defense mechanism,” Paul replied easily, hopping neatly over a fallen tree trunk. Daryl took the long way around it.

“What does _that_ mean?”

“If I seem like I’m being forthcoming, just chit-chat with people, it’s less likely they’ll keep pressing to know more about me. I don’t like people in my business.”

“I hear that.”

“We’re very similar, you and me. I smile and chat to keep people at arm’s length and you send that death glare their way to accomplish the same task.” Paul peeked over his rabbits. “One of my foster moms used to remind me that you catch more flies with honey, but my guess is you’re not trying to catch flies at all.”

“Don’t suppose I am.”

“Caught me anyway, despite your best efforts.”

Daryl smiled at that and shifted the buck’s weight across his shoulders. “Like a bad cold, that’s right.”

“Ouch, Dixon! You wound me.”

“Now don’t be a drama queen, Paul. Let’s just get this meat home, we’re almost there.”

They walked in a comfortable silence for another half-mile. The secondary wall would be visible soon, the sounds already filtering through the forest.

“I like when you do that,” Paul said quietly. 

“What’s that?”

“I like when you say my name.”

Daryl scoffed. “Everybody’s always saying your name. Always asking for favors, anytime we head out on a trip it’s Jesus this and Jesus that.”

“That’s not my name, Daryl.”

“If you don’t like people callin’ you Jesus you could ask them to stop calling you that.” _Or not give them the option in the first place._

“I’m fine with them calling me that. I’m telling _you_ that I like when _you_ call me Paul.”

Daryl frowned. “Okay?”

Paul burst out laughing as they passed the individuals on outer watch. “If you didn’t have a deer and I didn’t have these rabbits I would _kiss_ you right now.”

Daryl clocked a shocked look on the face of one of the workers from the Kingdom. He glared until the man got his eyes off the pair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, _Paul_.” He kept his mouth shut the rest of the way to the kitchens where they were greeted like conquering heroes for their haul. He tried to put Paul’s weird shit aside and he succeeded for awhile. He took a watch shift out beyond the wall for a couple hours and repaired one of their fences inside. Maggie made a face at him when he trekked through Barrington House looking for some tool or another one of the construction guys was asking about. 

“Least take off your shoes at the door, Daryl.”

Daryl was rummaging in a drawer in the kitchen and gave her a disbelieving stare. “You serious?”

“We’re building a civilization and you’re tracking in God knows what from God knows where.”

“Never bothered you before.” He spied a pair of vise grips and yanked them out of the drawer. _Wrong tool for every job_ , he thought, _should do the trick_. “Anything else you gotta tell me?”

“Real glad to see you and Jesus hitting it off.”

Daryl rolled his eyes and slid the drawer shut. “Alright. I’m leaving.”

“I’m just _saying_.”

“Bye!”

\---

“You’re favoring your shoulder again.”

Paul was heating up a can of soup on the hot plate. They’d missed communal dinner while they were out on watch and were too tired and cold to venture up to the big house. All their overflow population was _inside_ the big house at this point of the season, finally too cold at night to withstand it in a tent. Well, Daryl could, if he had to, had done it before, but he was still living in the trailer months on.

“Just the weather, it’ll go away.”

“Could heat up some water and put it in the pack for you.”

Daryl looked up from his task at hand, sharpening their hunting knives. “If it ain’t a bother, that’d be good.”

“No bother.”

After they sat together sipping on the soup, getting just enough food in their bellies to stave off hunger and fall asleep easy, they moved around each other finishing up the chores of the day. Paul had taken their laundry out that morning and they’d picked it up on their way back from watch, clothes neatly folded by the little kids they got taking turns doing chores. Daryl put it all away in the little dresser. Paul boiled more water and fixed up the hot water bottle for Daryl, then forced him to sit still for twenty minutes. Daryl finished up with the knives and as he returned them to the counter he stopped in his tracks. “Oh.”

Paul was tucking the clean top sheet into the bottom of the mattress. “Oh?”

“I think you’ve domesticated me.”

Paul chuckled and smoothed the sheet over the bed. “Is that a good thing?” Daryl looked over at Paul and saw something different in his eyes. Something maybe ... considering. 

Daryl shrugged, moving the knives until they were just so. He kept his eyes on them, safer than looking up at Paul and letting him see this stuff in his eyes. “Just a thing, a think. Hey, I’m gonna clean off our boots.” It was abrupt and transparent but he knew Paul wasn’t going to call him on it. He took both pairs and sat out on the trailer’s step with the scraper. He pulled all kinds of who knows what off their shoes, movements quick and efficient. He finished before his brain had settled and sat looking out at the land lightly dusted by snow. The kids had been having fun with this weather, and Maggie had been at her wit’s end with their wet and muddy footprints on the rugs. Daryl didn’t get it, with everything they’d been through, why she worried so much about keeping that house clean but here he was prying dried mud off boots that were just gonna get caked with it again tomorrow.

He went back inside, dropping the boots by the door and heading to the little sink to wash his hands. Paul stood next to it, leaning against the counter.

“You okay?”

Paul clutched the edge of the counter behind him. “I want to ask you a question but I don’t want to upset you. Or ... scare you.”

“I don’t scare easy, you know that.”

“This isn’t like that. Not asking you to go out on a month-long run with me through uncharted territory.”

 _I’d do that in a heartbeat_. “What’re you asking then?”

“I’m asking if you’d be interested in sharing my bed.”

“You cold?” He played dumb, shifted uncomfortably. Daryl knew what Paul was asking, or had an idea, but he wanted to hear Paul say it.

“Yeah I am, but also ... Daryl. I—” He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “This is difficult.”

Paul’s clear discomfort upset him more than his own. “You want me to have sex with you?” He threw it out there, cutting to the chase. Or what he thought the chase was. His mind three months ago would have jumped right to Paul wanting him out of the trailer but he knew better now. And that’s the only thing that Paul would think scared Daryl. It’s the only thing under the sun they hadn’t talked about, in their own quiet way.

Paul flushed. “Maybe? I mean, yes. But I’m not asking—we could start slow. If you wanted to start at all.” Daryl watched him, took in how Paul had his hair down around his shoulders, loose for the night. So _fucking domestic_. “I’m sorry,” Paul added after a moment.

“Don’t apologize,” Daryl said softly.

“No, I made you uncomfortable, I’m sorry—”

Daryl shook his head and tilted his head at the bed. “Nah, I’ll keep you warm.”

\---

Daryl slid into the bed behind Paul after he’d secured the trailer. It wasn’t the first time he’d slept in the bed; last month Paul had been out on a run and Daryl had gone ahead and taken him up on that offer from his first night in the trailer. It’s a small bed and they won’t have space to spread out. “Been a long time since I touched someone,” Daryl said quietly, drawing up the sheet and the wool blanket and lying down on his side. They shared a pillow and Daryl got the smell of Paul’s hair in his nose after one deep breath.

“Me too,” Paul answered, reaching back to take Daryl’s hand and pull it over his side.

“Hard to believe that.”

“Told you, we’re a lot alike. I’ve spent more time with you these last months than with anyone else since Before. That’s because I like spending time with you. I don’t worry that you’re going to expect me to be something I’m not.”

“Like you the way you are.” He said the words to the back of Paul’s head, kind of a coward’s move but it was easier like this, easier under cover of dark. Paul was warm under his arm. “I figure out here now, anyone still around is here because one reason or another and you were keeping these people alive. Goin’ out puttin’ yourself at risk ‘cause you care about these people. I’d be lucky to be one of those people you care about.”

“You are. More than the rest, you are.”

Daryl didn’t understand why or how but he knew to keep his mouth shut about that and just let it happen. Paul pulled on Daryl’s arm and he scooted in closer, warmth all down his front now. “Good night, Paul,” Daryl whispered. He felt Paul fall asleep under his arm, dropped right off faster than he usually did. Daryl had spent months listening to Paul toss and turn once the lantern was out. He closed his eyes, satisfied that if nothing else, he could make sure Paul gets a restful night, warm and uninterrupted. _Gonna keep this as long as I can_. His clothes were put away in a dresser, he was lying in between clean sheets and had clean boots sitting by the door with no plans for war or battle or danger on the horizon. His crossbow had seen more use lately putting dinner on the table than protecting his family. He was clean, warm, and for the first time in maybe his whole life he felt like someone _got_ him, and that someone was safe and sound right there, trusting Daryl to keep him like that. “Sleep tight,” he murmured, and slipped under easily.

**Author's Note:**

> you can catch me on tumblr at yessoupy discussing the harmful nature of conspiracy theorism, harry styles, and if you squint you'll find some TWD.


End file.
